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Friday, 23 January 2015

Taking Liberties

Alphen, Netherlands. 23
January. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, is regarded as
the father of the English Parliament. Seven hundred and fifty years ago this
week he said, “You can maintain power over people as long as you give them
something. Rob a man of everything and that man will no longer be in your power”.
The January Parliament sat on 20
January, 1265 some fifty years after the 1215 signing of Magna Carta that in
time became the font of all English liberties.
Indeed, for the first time a Parliament comprised not just nobles but
the knights and burgesses of the English shires. De Montfort’s aim was to confirm his power
and constrain that of King Henry III after the latter’s defeat at the Battle of
Lewes. However, the January Parliament also
confirmed the two principles of freedom of conscience and freedom before the
law established by the great William Marshal in the aftermath of Magna Carta. Over centuries the great political shifts of
the thirteenth century established the very idea of freedom which England gave
to much of rest of the world – government by the people, for the people and of
the people. Today, those freedoms and
liberties are under threat across Europe at several levels as freedom is traded
in the name of security, function and ‘efficiency’.

At the oligarchic high
bureaucratic level freedom is under threat from a European caste that believes
they know best and that the over-concentration of power in a bureaucratic few
is in the best interest of all.
Yesterday’s decision by the European Central Bank to print €1.1 trillion
may or may not help to stimulate dormant growth, although in the absence of
structural reforms it looks an increasingly desperate measure by the European
Mutual Impoverishment Pact (formerly known as the EU). Critically, there is no democratic oversight
of the ECB and little accountability. Time will tell but Mario Draghi’s actions
look very much like those of a man who is looking after his friends in southern
Europe at the expense of the taxpayer’s and savers of northern and western
Europe.

At the security level the
threat posed by Islamic State to Europe is dangerous and growing. One reason for that threat is the utter
irresponsibility of liberal elites in allowing such extreme beliefs to use
liberal societies as incubators in the name of multiculturalism and political
correctness. Now, be it the European
Arrest Warrant or the sweeping new powers of surveillance demanded by states,
elites are in a desperate game of catch-up to both mask and deal with the
consequence of their own irresponsibility.
Yes, the threat is such that the state and the super-state may indeed
need new powers but who, how and what is going to hold that power to account.

Even at the popular
level basic rights and freedoms are being eroded as power is ever taken ever
more distant from the people in Europe.
Politicians still routinely trot out the mantras that they are defending
free speech and democracy but are they? Political machines seem far more
interested in defending themselves, hence the almost universal obsession with
the short-term by elites. Je Suis Charlie many be an emotive
slogan but make so mistake the French state was uncomfortable with Charlie Hebdo. In England, the font of liberty, it is
questionable whether the newspaper would have been even able to publish much of
its work under the onerous hate laws that have been introduced in the past
decade to mask the consequences of government responsibility.

Under pressure from
above and without European society is increasingly self-censoring. Naturally, liberty also implies responsibility
in what one says and does. However, there
is a growing tendency to appease extremism on the grounds that it shows
cultural sensitivity or because the Internet mob-rule, much of it generated by
the sneering, censorious political Left, that is intimidating any dissent from
their imposed ‘convention’. A mark of the extent to which British society is
retreating from responsible liberty is the extent to which British police (yes,
British police) now police thought as well as actions. Indeed, there was a time when English law
could distinguish between criminals and idiots, but not it seems any more.

Eight hundred years on
from Magna Carta and seven hundred and fifty years on from the January
Parliament it is as vital as ever that responsible citizens challenge
over-mighty oligarchies. Sadly such oligarchies are the stuff of power in
Europe today with parliaments reduced to being little more than impotent
fig-leaves for over-mighty executives.

Simon de Montfort lost
his life on 4 August, 1265 at the Battle of Evesham slain by royalists. The absolute power of the King was restored
and would not be so directly challenged until that great dissenter Oliver Cromwell
established the principles of parliamentary democracy that endured until the
2007 Treaty of Lisbon. In 1654 Cromwell
said, “In every government there must be somewhat fundamental, somewhat like a
Magna Charta, that should be standing and unalterable”.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.